Looking for Your Next Company Leader? Here’s What to Ask in an Interview

November 13, 2018

Great leaders add value to your company in the form of innovation, collaboration, and higher productivity and profits. Poor leaders, on the other hand, can truly drag a team down, eating away at the bottom line.

But when it comes time to hire your next company leader, how do you get behind the candidate mask and tell whether the person you’re evaluating really has what you’re looking for or if they just sound great in an interview? The Houston recruiters at Murray Resources can help. Start with these questions related to the following key areas:

Opportunities

Explain a time when you identified a business opportunity you wanted your company to take advantage of?

How did you recognize it? Why did you think it was important?

How did you make the case for it? What kind of support did you ask for and get?

What challenges did you face long the way?

What was the overall outcome?

Successes

Tell me about a project you’re most proud of. What was the outcome?

Explain a time when your idea improved your company in some way?

Talk about a time when a project didn’t work out the way you hoped.

How do you go about persuading people when they don’t agree with or share your vision?

Employee Relationships

What would you do if you had an employee quit at the last minute and you were under pressure due to a tight deadline?

What’s your strategy for monitoring the performance of individuals on your team?

How do you go about keeping your people motivated? What do you do when you see someone getting off track?

How would you describe your individual leadership style?

As candidates are answering these questions, look for those who can get as specific as possible with examples, statistics, percentages, timelines and dollar amounts. As Houston recruiters, we know vague answers are often a red flag. A few other warning signs to be on the lookout for include:

Negativity and arrogance. This isn’t the kind of attitude that will motivate a team to succeed.

Discrepancies. If something doesn’t align with what a candidate wrote on their resume, make sure you ask plenty of follow up questions to find out the truth.

Rigidness. Good leaders are flexible and need to be able to adjust. If there’s any sense of inflexibility, this could be a sign of how they manage their team, which is a challenge even under the best of circumstances.

Defensiveness. If you ask questions and get defensiveness in return, you’re going to wonder why. It could be a sign that a candidate isn’t willing to take on accountability when issues arise.

Get professional help hiring your next company leaders.

With Murray Resources we make it easy. In fact, as award-winning Houston recruiters, we’ve helped high-performance organizations – including numerous Fortune 1000 companies – build their teams for over 30 years. Contact us today to learn more about what makes us different.